Carmarthenshire Planning Problems and more

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

An interesting snippet of legislation was laid down just before parliament dissolved the other day which removed the requirement to appoint a 'Designated Independent Person' (DIP) in disciplinary proceedings related to errant chief officers. However, it appears to relate only to England.

The current procedure involves the setting up of a disciplinary panel which could issue a report recommending either disciplinary measures or dismissal. The recommendations could only proceed if the DIP, usually a QC or similar, decided the chief officer had a case to answer.

Under the new rules the necessity for a DIP has been removed and the decision would be made by a vote of full council and overseen by a panel made up of local electors.

One of the reasons behind the move is to cut the cost and time involved in the process, one case is cited as having taken 16 months and £420,000. It could also lessen the number of chief officers being offered (or demanding) inflated golden goodbyes by councils eager to avoid a costly legal process, which is basically what happened in Pembrokeshire with Bryn Parry Jones.

In Wales, the local government reform White Paper recognises that the extra employment protection is to protect senior officers from political interference but that this "must not prevent the council from dismissing them without compensation where they are not performing their duties responsibly".

Indeed, if Chief Executives are, for example, acting unlawfully or interfering in the political process themselves, that extra protection becomes an enormous obstacle to democracy and accountability.

The White Paper also suggests that there should be term limits for Chief Executives;"There is reason to believe that, in some circumstances, Chief Executives retaining their posts for long periods can lead to an entrenchment of power and influence within the Authority which can serve as an obstacle to effective relations between Elected Members and officers and threaten the independence of the Executive"

Something which is very evident (and alive and well) in Carmarthenshire where, as the White Paper quotes, "the balance of governance has become disjointed".
It's difficult to remember a time when the 'Executive' was independent, around thirteen years ago I believe.

The consultation on the Wales Local Government White Paper is open until the end of April.

Friday, 27 March 2015

Update 30th March - BBC Wales are reporting that the home care company, Mitie, referred to in the post below, has now agreed to pay it's staff their travel time. Hopefully the firm will thank the two whistleblowers, both former members of staff, who brought the matter to their attention....

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I'm please to see that this week's Carmarthenshire Herald picks up on the critical report from the Wales Audit Office regarding child safeguarding which I mentioned earlier in the week. Featuring on the front page, it describes the report as 'hard-hitting' and the WAO's conclusion that members were "unfamiliar with risk management as a concept" as 'devastating', and rightly so.
Indeed, and it's perhaps a worrying fact that the council is trusted with the role of corporate parents for looked after children.
As usual, there was no comment from the council.

County Hallhas been equally tight lipped over the home care pay scandal reported over the past week or two by BBC Wales and, in detail, over on Cneifiwr's blog. The story is given the front page headline in the Carmarthenshire Herald.

As I'm sure readers are now well aware, Village Home Care, or rather its parent company, Mitie, which is commissioned by the council to deliver home care to the elderly and vulnerable, is being investigated by HMRC for allegedly breaching minimum wage rules.

One of the issues is the ridiculously short time allowed to travel between appointments. Basically workers are not being paid adequately (an understatement) for travelling times, leading to 'clipping' which means that visits are cut short as the carers attempt to reach the next visit, maybe twenty miles away in the five minutes allowed.

The result of this is not only visits being cut short leading to poorer levels of care, but carers being actually paid well below the minimum wage.

The recent CCSIW report into Village Home Care itself noted the travelling time issue, lengthy hours and split shifts. It also found compliance failure regarding staff training, quality monitoring systems and annual quality of care reports.
The company was also informed it must not start care work without proper assessment and regular reviews.

This is nothing new. Locally, I am aware of several youngsters who were employed by Village Home Care. Once it became apparent that they were expected to work over 48 hours a week for what worked out to be about £3 an hour or less with little, if any training, they didn't last long. Those I knew were kind and caring but it is fairly obvious that many companies are prepared to take virtually anyone on.

One remarked to me as to how they were expected to arrive at a person's home at say 7.30am, stay there for the allotted hour then be half way across the county's rural roads to the next appointment by 8.35.

This was at least three years ago. Yesterday the council said it would be meeting with the company. Presumably to have a go at them for giving the council bad press. This is the council's idea of care in the community and it is inconceivable that they have been unaware of these problems. They have clearly chosen, until reported in the press, to turn a blind eye.
In addition, the council has just awarded four year contracts for home care services in the county and the 'Framework' agreement began on the 2nd March. Given that the issues identified above have been known for some time, and are possible not confined to just the company mentioned, it will be interesting to see who has been successful for the approved 'framework'.

Lastly, this week's observations from 'Cadno', who is rapidly turning into one of Caebrwyn's favourite columnists;

"Carmarthenshire has branded itself as ‘The Garden of Wales’
and certainly the rich green landscape that rolls across the landscape between
Laugharne, Llanybydder, Llanelli, and Llandeilo suggests that there is
something to that description. Criss-crossed by a few arterial roads and many
small country byways and highways, the County’s charm is that wherever one is
one is not too far from a rural idyll.

The important thing about gardens, whether you are growing
cabbages or carnations, is a plentiful supply of fertiliser.

And so we come to County Hall, which produces more
fertiliser than would be needed by a garden the size of the Sahara: to a depth
of four feet and rising.

So overflowing is County Hall with rubbish that it has even
privatised its generation and recycling to its own pet company.

Cwm Environmental is a purportedly private operator in which
the sole shareholder is the local authority. In other words, and according to
its own website, Cwm Environmental is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the County
Council.

As he who pays the fiddler calls the tune, you might wonder
what advantages could accrue to the local authority by setting up a company in
this way.

Well, let’s look towards Llangadog.

Sitting near Y Garn Goch, Llangadog is one of those rural
communities that make up much of the patchwork of small settlements that are
dotted around Carmarthenshire. A former centre for droving, its years of
home-generated prosperity are past. It has fallen on increasingly hard times
over recent years. 200 jobs were lost when the creamery closed in 2005.

It
follows that Llangadog is a community that cannot take the loss of any jobs,
let alone the ten that will be lost there if Carmarthenshire County Council has
its way.

You see, readers, there is something unusual about the
Llangadog site that suggests a conflict of interest between the Council in its
role as a statutory authority and its interest as a shareholder in a private
company where the profit motive rules the roost.

Our Council claims that Llangadog is an unfortunate casualty
of its drive to save money. So skint is Carmarthenshire County Council after
outfitting the Almighty’s favourite bowling alley that it cannot afford to
renew its contract with the site operator, AWS.

More to the point is that Llangadog is the only remaining
site of its type in the County which is not operated by Cwm Environmental.

That Llangadog is an efficient and well-performing site is
shown by the fact that over 80% of rubbish brought to the AWS facility is
recycled. That’s an awful lot of copies of the Council’s in-house propaganda
sheet Carmarthenshire ‘News’.

In the whole of Carmarthenshire, that is, readers, in every
other site managed by the Council’s own notionally private enterprise, the
average recycling rate is below 55%.
If Llangadog closes residents would need to travel to
Ammanford. 25 miles away. How ‘green’ is that, readers? You force people to
take an hour and a half to travel backwards and forwards to a site which
recycles under two thirds as much as the facility far closer to hand.

The County Council’s disturbing lack of familiarity with the
geography of the county it is supposed to serve is alarming.

Last week, this
paper reported that the Council’s celebration of its ‘success’ in building a
new school near Llandeilo, ignored the human cost of transporting 400 students
every day from Llandovery and the small communities around it to the new shiny
building, leading to imminent closure for Ysgol
Gyfun Pantycelyn.

There is more to ‘public service’ than husbanding public
money readers. The ‘service’ element should count far higher than it does.
Shuffling thousands, if not hundreds of thousands and millions into the pet
projects of a coalition without an electoral mandate, while bowing the knee to
over-mighty officers is a betrayal of Carmarthenshire.

Our county really does
deserve an awful lot better than the current collection of rancid misfits and
halfwits who are allegedly running the show.

In a local authority in which the governing group has
condoned funding libel actions for its highest paid staff member and then gone
on to stomach a scheme to permit the same Chief Executive to attempt to stave
off a tax liability on his publicly funded pension, we can guess that pound
signs are more important than providing service.

The question on the latter point – as seems to have escaped
Kevin ‘Adequate’ Madge and the legion of the dumbed and damned that follow his
blustering lead – is not whether or not the decision was legally correct but
whether it was morally and objectively defensible. It was certainly morally
reprehensible and objectively flawed.

The Council was compelled to end the
scheme by the Wales Audit Office, which it did with the type of spectacular
ill-grace one would expect from a ten year old with their hands caught in the
cookie jar and not from a collection of old nags and knacker-man leavings who
really should have known better in the first place.

So, readers, the question the Council needs to ask itself
when considering withdrawing a local service should not be a calculation made
in pounds shillings and pence (although Cadno suspects that such is the quality
of debate in Carmarthenshire that LSD is in play somewhere). Leave the bean-counters and their like in
charge and we would all be driving beige Trabants and living in ‘efficiency’
apartments.

There are more important things for Councils to think about. The
effect of cuts and closures on rural communities, for one thing; the human cost
of decisions measured in lives affected and not in pennies saved for another.

Carmarthenshire County Council is very quick to blow its own
trumpet about the success of its waste management and recycling schemes. At the
moment, there seems to be an initiative a week.

Cadno suggests, however, that
the Council’s blathering on about its small ‘achievements’, pushing out
releases to be printed without query or criticism in publications over which it
has an editorial influence, masks a vacuum at its centre where common-sense and
compassion should sit.

Common-sense says that if you are serious about recycling you
do not close a plant which is delivering it better than other facilities. You
aim to bring your facilities – or that of your wholly owned subsidiary – up to
the mark.

If you are serious about the environment, you would know that a long
round trip to Ammanford or – worse – Nantycaws will lead to lower recycling
rates and – potentially – increased fly-tipping.
Spending £75,000 to make Llangadog prettier, or to put in
prettier speed bumps, as recently announced, is not going to replace ten jobs.

So, readers: which of the Executive Board will exercise
their common sense? Moreover, which of them actually have any?"

Incidentally, and unfortunately for County Hall, the contract to deliver waste services for the next few years expires this month and must go out to full tender. This has caused some problems and I understand legal opinions have been sought..as they usually are.

One cannot imagine any company other than Cwm being awarded this contract but according to scrutiny minutes from last November, "CWM Environmental would not be treated any differently to other potential tenderer". You will recall that Cwm has also been in the news recently over long hours and low pay.

It will be an interesting one to watch.

Inhabitants of County Hall settle down to read the latest edition of the Carmarthenshire Herald

A few years back, after lengthy monitoring, Llandeilo's main street became a 'Air Quality Management Area' after breaching safe levels of NO2 emissions. The purpose of the official designation is that this should then influence council policy such as Highways, Transport and Planning.

Quite how this was 'considered' when the decision was made to close Pantycelyn School in Llandovery and bus four hundred children, twice a day, through the middle of Llandeilo to get to the new school site is anyone's guess.

Anyway, it now appears that Llandeilo is not alone in breaching pollution levels and has been joined by the centres of Carmarthen and Llanelli who are about to have AQMA status themselves. Presumably this has been factored into the 1200 home (and 2000 car?) 'West Carmarthen' development...not.

It will come as no surprise that County Hall is included in the Carmarthen 'AQMA' as it has been emitting it's very own pungent brand of toxic gas for some time...

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Further to correspondence exchanged in January, I received a letter from chief executive Mark James' solicitors, early this month, again regarding his personal damages arising from the unlawful publicly funded counterclaim.

My (somewhat desperate) proposal of a temporary and realistic, good faith, small token monthly payment was rejected out of hand, I was reminded of the charge on my home and a demand was made for details of any equity and 'credible' proposals by the 24th March. I was also reminded that the running total currently stands at £32,479.15

The final paragraph however refers to this blog and makes two points. The first concern a statement that I will 'not pay a penny' to their client.

The second reads thus;

"We also note with concern that you continue to malign our client's good name through recent articles that you have posted on the blog. Our client's position remains reserved in this regard"

I responded to the letter on the 10th March and made it clear that their client has given me no choice other than to fight this all the way. I will not volunteer any information and I stand by my statement that I will not pay their client a penny.

As for the unspecified legal posturing at the end of the letter, if Mr James has a specific complaint, this time he might like to mention it before issuing any further proceedings. Otherwise, and as I said in my response, it seems to me to be nothing more than a demand for money with menaces.

I have not yet received a response.

Due to the circumstances I have nothing further to add at the moment and, with apologies to readers, will not be publishing comments on this post.

In a somewhat bizarre move, and a month after the budget, the council decided to issue a press release the other day about the handful of services 'saved' by the Executive Board, including of course, that old red herring, lollipop patrols.

Whether this was an attempt to use the press office for a bit of thinly disguised electioneering on behalf of local Labour party candidates is anyone's guess. To make matters worse, the Llanelli Star dutifully transformed the headline to 'Carmarthenshire council to prioritise children's safety in budget cut choices'. Instead of handing out free tins of soup to boost sales, the paper might been better advised to look beyond the spin and nonsense churned out by County Hall.

A relatively simple check would have revealed that within the budget, £173,000 has been cut from social work teams, £100,000 from fostering support, £75,000 from Behavioural Support, £35,000 from Women's Aid, and so on. In addition, recent reports from the Ombudsman and the Wales Audit Office show that they're not overly impressed with the council's record on Child safeguarding either.

There is more to 'prioritising children's safety' than a quick, disingenuous PR stunt over lollipop patrols.

At the other end of the age scale, you may have seen the reports that firms engaged by the council to carry out home care for the elderly have been paying their employees considerably less than the minimum wage - Cneifiwr's latest post is a 'must read' on the story.

In it's hurry to sell off any council owned building which isn't tied down, the council have got a bit muddled over the wording of a consultation to move Llandeilo Public Library, which has occupied it's own purpose-built building in Crescent Road Car Park since 1980.
'Views are being sought' from local residents about moving it into the council offices at the other end of the car park.

Unfortunately the first part of the consultation blurb describes it as a 'development opportunity' and appears to be addressing future purchasers and developers, suggesting, god forbid, that the decision has already been made;

The reality is that £250,000 of cuts to the library service have been approved for the next three years, and £40,000 has been paid to a consultant to consider the outsourcing of the whole leisure department into a 'trust' anyway. So if it does move into the council offices, make the most of it, it's unlikely to be there long.

Monday, 23 March 2015

Although clearly not connected to the ongoing police investigation, Operation Almond, Rhydgors Special school was back in the news today following a critical CSSIW report.
It followed an earlier Estyn report which found that its prospects for improvement were “unsatisfactory”.

With that in mind, it's perhaps worth noting the most recent report from the Wales Audit Office regarding the council's Child Safeguarding procedures which appears on the agenda for the next meeting of the Audit Committee.

You may also remember the public report issued by the Ombudsman in January which found serious failings in the council's duty of care towards a four year old child.

The WAO report describes the procedures as "mostly adequate" - which in local government parlance means 'could do a lot better'.

Anything less than a finding of 'excellence' should give serious cause for concern.

The report has found that there was no clear and defined safeguarding policy, and child safeguarding did not appear on the Corporate Risk Register. It also said that "Members...were unfamiliar with Risk Management as a concept".

It also found that whilst the council operates Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) which checks the suitability of those working with children, this should be extended to all services which regularly come into contact with children. The inference here is that there is a possibility of holes in the net.

Another significant finding was a lack of safeguarding training with the take-up rate in Carmarthenshire Council well below the Wales average.

Significantly it found that neither the Executive Member for Safeguarding, nor the Chair of Scrutiny for Safeguarding "could report on having received safeguarding training which raises concerns about their ability to effectively deliver their responsibilities"
The Council also had a much higher than average percentage of people who had never received safeguarding training.

We can only hope things have improved.

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Also rearing its ugly head on the Audit Committee agenda is the WAO annual audit of grant management procedures and yet again, for the third (or is it fourth?) year running, many of the same weaknesses have been identified.

Over half the grants put forward for audit were 'qualified' (ie something wrong) and nearly half of the claims had to be amended.

Due to the lack of significant improvement even though less grants were audited this year than last, the work involved has meant an increase in audit fees.

Similar problems have arisen as in previous years (covered every year by this blog) and the WAO have highlighted issues such as poor compliance with procurement rules and, in so many words, a lack of proper paper trails.

We also know that the South West Wales Property Fund grant, administered by Carmarthenshire council has been in the spotlight over the past year.

This arose after concerns were highlighted over 'Meryl's millions' and further concerns were reported to the WAO by the now retired Director of Resources, Roger Jones.
In December the WAO announced it was looking specifically at these grants, or a couple of them anyway.

The matter appears to be slowly progressing and this latest report states that;"due to concerns identified, we have also issued separate reports on the awarding of two grants under the EUR01 Property Development Fund grant. We await a response from the Council and will summarise our findings in a separate report"
So, there we are, we'll have to wait and see.

Questions and concerns over the council's grant management procedures were swiftly dismissed by the chief executive, Mark James last year who said that once they had a word with the Wales Audit Office, they usually 'backed down'.

Unfortunately, as we know only too well, that arrogant and cavalier attitude is very familiar to anyone and everyone who has criticised the council in some way and is definitely not the best approach, nor mechanism for further scrutiny and improvement...

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Lastly, and on a lighter note, the 'Chairman's Diary' often provides a good illustration of that parallel universe inhabited by the pillars of Carmarthenshire Council.

In what only can be described as the ultimate sacrifice, the Mark James budget passed last month included a reduction of 'official cars' from two to one. How they will manage I don't know.

Incidentally, I have to be careful what I say about who is actually in the 'chauffeur driven limo' as, surprisingly, it turned out to be a very touchy subject in the libel case. My argument that such archaic civic luxuries were wasteful and unnecessary, no matter who was being ferried around, fell on deaf ears.

Anyway, booked into the Diary for next Friday is a trip to Haverfordwest to attend the Pembrokeshire County Council Civic Dinner. Whoopee! Cllr Daff Davies, plus consort (presumably Mrs Daff) will be donning the gold plated regalia and cruising west to wine and dine with their Pembrokeshire counterparts.

One wonders if they will compare notes over the vol-au-vents on representing the two basket cases of Wales?

And what will the toast be in that Victorian parallel universe? "Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses please.....to our glorious chief executives, both past and present"!

Saturday, 21 March 2015

The Ffos Las racecourse in Trimsaran has been one of the jewels in Meryl's crown and, over the past few years planning permission has been granted by the council for a whopping 528 homes on the largely greenbelt area surrounding the racecourse.

The 528 home development was roughly split into two halves. Permission for the first was granted in 2009 and the second wave of 280 homes was granted in 2012. One of the reasons put forward by Ffos Las Ltd was that permission for these 280 homes was essential for the future viability of the racecourse.

The council duly obliged and Ffos Las Ltd were given three years, as is usual, to submit full plans and five years to start the construction.

There was also a Section 106 planning obligation that 15% of the homes were to be affordable and £100,000 to be used for community facilites, eg play areas, within this large development.

Over the years Carmarthenshire Council has been fairly casual over the requirements for affordable dwellings from developers. At the Stradey site there was no requirement at all for the 300-odd home development. An arrangement described as 'unusual' by the head of planning himself.

Ffos Las Ltd applied late last year to extend the time limit to begin this second phase of 280 homes. Not particularly a problem perhaps.

However, buried within the application was a request for the authority to reconsider the S106 agreement, whether this pertains to the affordable housing or the community contribution, or both, is unknown. No details are provided but Ffos Las submitted a 'Viability appraisal prepared by Savills which demonstrates that the proposed development is not viable with the current planning obligations'
Anyone, of course, can comment on a planning application but given it's title; 'Extend time period within which reserved matters applications may be submitted' this one appears to relate entirely to the extension of time, one has to dig a little further to find the reference to the S106 agreement.

Also, sufficient documentation must be made available for interested parties to make an informed comment. A Freedom of Information request for the 'Viability Appraisal' was refused under commercial confidentiality.

The application has yet to be decided but it would appear that this should be a contender for a decision by the planning committee rather than through delegated power, so at least, if nothing else, the proposed S106 'variations' can be checked out.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Friday's Policy and Resources Scrutiny agenda sees, at last, a draft revised Press and Media Protocol. This has been an ongoing exercise which officially began in January 2014 but which has been called for long before that.

County Hall has, for years, deliberately compromised the ability of the local press to report negative stories, it has attempted to deter investigative journalism, even adding that unique clause (currently suspended) to it's constitution to provide funds to sue should anyone get too critical. Another example was a phone call from County Hall's presidential suite putting paid to a FOI request made by a local reporter regarding senior officer expenses.

The nonsense of threatening to withdraw advertising funding from local papers as punishment for negative stories has gone on for years and, in the past, both the Carmarthen Journal and the South Wales Guardian have been in their sights; blackmail, in other words.

The Plaid opposition brought forward a Motion for full council to respect the freedom of the local press. The chief executive decided that this wasn't going anywhere near full council and kicked it into touch.

The matter was dealt with behind closed doors by his loyal disciples, Cllr Pam Palmer and press manager Ms Debbie Williams, the latter being herself the author of the infamous leaked email. Ms Williams has also acted as ears for the chief executive, one documented occasion saw her reporting, to the chief executive, an overheard conversation between a Member and a reporter.

2012 also saw the long running saga over the Sainsbury's press release, for which the leader, Kevin Madge, had his knuckles rapped by the Ombudsman for using the council press office for political attack. It later transpired that the offending article had been signed off by the chief executive.

Things also took a turn for the worse with the publication of the Wales Audit Office reports in January 2014 with the press office again galvanised into action to attack the auditor, politicians and anyone who disagreed with the Mark James world view.

Many controversial 'press releases, including demands for the auditor to retract his opinions over his 'unlawful' findings have been attributed to unnamed spokespersons, this even breached the old protocol.

The emphasis on reputation management has been of paramount importance to County Hall, and readers of this, and Cneifiwr's blog will know that the press office has not been called the Ministry of Spin without good reason. The first thing to suffer is always the truth. Internal emails before, during and after the #daftarrest episode show that defensiveness and damage limitation were the priority. The chief executive even decided on the wording of the #daftarrest council meeting Minute to reduce the scope for criticism and analysis.

Not only is the press office one of the most generously funded in Wales, recent figures unearthed by opposition councillors show that the wages bill for technical services (emptying your bins etc) has fallen by nearly 10% since 2009. The wages bill for the press office, on the other hand, has risen by nearly 13% in the same period.

Over the years numerous calls have been made to end the publication of the council propaganda free sheet the 'Carmarthenshire News'. The decision to reduce publication from six to four editions per year has meant even more drivel and pictures of officials in hard hats has to be packed into each issue.

The council's 'partners', eg the health board, fire service and colleges also have to cough up for the privilege of sustaining this nonsense.

You'll always be hard pushed to find a mention of an adverse report anywhere on the council website, let alone in the 'media' section. The link to the recent public report from the ombudsman was there for exactly the time required by law - three weeks. However, the nauseating press release announcing that the chief executive was staying, signed-off by Kev and Pam is still lingering as 'news', like a bad smell, six weeks after it first appeared.

The very recent WLGA governance review recognised the enormity of the problem and said that the council 'will not seek to suppress or censor the activity of an independent press and media'.

The remit of the group reviewing the press and media protocol can be found here and the draft protocol, authored by Ms Williams of leaked email fame, here. There's still no recognition of the independence of local media.

The trouble is, leopard's don't change their spots and whilst a few tweaks to the protocol might tick boxes, the toxic culture remains alive and well, for now. It will take the continued determination of the local media, including bloggers to play their part in exposing the spin, pushing for change and making the local authority accountable.

Whilst I'm on the subject of Friday's scrutiny meeting, another item on the agenda, and not one you will read about in the Carmarthenshire News, is that the authority have spent £2.88m on external consultants over the past year. That's around £15 per man, woman and child in the county.

The majority of the expenditure involves the technical services department and of course the list excludes the cost of external legal advice, representation and various 'opinions'...

As I said back in January Carmarthenshire County Councillor Sian Caiach is standing for Llanelli in the general election on May 7th. She is standing under the 'People First' banner.
True to the party title, Sian is asking the people what they want and what is important to them, and has issued the following press release;

People First promise to consult on all issues whenever possible before making decisions of your behalf. We have compiled a questionnaire based on the issues which were raised the most by you on the doorstep. We will try to get as many filled as possible both my our canvassers and by voters filling it in online at www.peoplefirstwales.org.uk or we will send paper copies out on request through the contact links on the website.

The results will guide our policies. Other political groups decide their policies first and then try to get them accepted by the voters. We feel that it should be the other way round!
The questions refer to both local issues as well as Welsh and UK ones. We will also be interested in taking some smaller samples from neighbouring areas to see if there are any major differences, for instance between Llanelli and the Carmarthen seats.

Our candidate, Sian Caiach, is our first Parliamentary Candidate and we hope to eventually field many.more candidates.We would actually like every candidate to consult locally and represent their areas based on local needs.This doesn't fit in with the "one size fits all" policy of the big parties. We are committed to the best quality of representation of the voters and believe that they must be asked to find out what they want. The results of this poll will be published in April.

In the meantime we will collect as many opinions as possible. We are interested in all responses, whether you intend to vote for us or not.

Friday, 13 March 2015

This week's edition of the Carmarthenshire Herald picks up on County Hall's relationship with the Towy Community Church and their recent appearance on the Executive Board agenda.
All summed up in this fine opinion piece by 'Cadno' (the fox);

Cadno detects a lapse of judgement

"Einstein once said: “God does not play dice with the universe.” We can, however, be confident that whatever sports or pastimes are pursued by your own god or gods (if you have any) that should Yahweh pop along to Johnstown of an evening, he would at least have the opportunity to go bowling.

There, alongside the sweeping curves of the Towy, the Almighty could pop in to see the Towy Community Church. The Church’s website proclaims that: ‘Towy Community Church, Carmarthen is a place where everyone is valued. Where inclusion and respect are practiced and where we strive to build strong and healthy community regardless of age, background or race.’

Fine words. After all, is not the lesson of Matthew 7: 1-5 that when we exercise judgement we should be wary of being judged ourselves? That would particularly seem to be the case when the relevant text refers to hypocritical judgement. After all, readers, it would be dreadful to say one thing and practice another.

If a church says it practises inclusion and respect then we are entitled to examine just how much it practises what it preaches.

February was LGBT History Month.

Across Wales, Councils flew the rainbow flag that showed – or at least appeared to show – that local authorities practised inclusion and respect for the LGBT community and those members of their staff who might choose to categorise themselves as one or the other of the relevant consonants.

But not, Cadno is sad to report, in Carmarthenshire. Carmarthenshire County Council took a vital stand for another group who feel they are unrepresented: the bigoted, the prejudiced, and the intolerant.

Carmarthenshire County Council did not fly the rainbow flag.

Cadno does not suggest for one minute that having pumped almost £1.5m and rising into ‘a Christian enterprise’, that the evangelical tail wagged the secular dog. That would be unfair to the Council.

It would also be a vile calumny to suggest that some pointy-headed senior nincompoop with an abiding belief in the literal truth of The Bible put the kybosh on the idea. Cadno will have none of that speculation, readers. Remember: judge not lest ye…etcetera.
No, readers, what people do on their knees whether in their private lives, in the tabernacle of their choice, or in their own home is none of Cadno’s concern.

Pray, read your psalters, testaments and holy books. Prey, do.

Cadno’s gripe is rather more to the point of what our Council does with public money that it should spend on behalf of and for the benefit of all Carmarthenshire’s residents.

So, Cadno’s complaint is not even that public money – Carmarthenshire’s public money - is being pumped into a project favouring one faith group above others

No, readers, baldly put it is not for a Council to bankroll ANY church, sect, or faith group.

Why one group should be favoured above others is not the point. The business of the Council is delivering and improving key public services to the communities it serves. Bin collections, dog wardens, safe roads, better schools, disability services, more opportunities for adult education.

That delivering these services and improvements in them might be evidence to the faithful that a living Lord indeed walks amongst us should be of only tangential interest; particularly when deciding where to spend money the Council holds on trust for everyone.

Yet, and after mean-spiritedly carving £18,000 out of the budget of Carmarthen’s Myrddin Special and Autistic Unit, it has been seriously suggested that the Council use some of its dosh to subsidise the work of Jehovah by stumping up £20,000 for a new boiler for the Towy Community Church. On the planet occupied by the Council member concerned – take a bow Cllr Jane Tremlett – verily is it said that the Labour/Independent coalition taketh away from each according to their needs and giveth to those who have trousered a load of dosh already.

On planet Earth, even in County Hall, such a politically maladroit comment by the Executive Board Member for Social Care and Health should start the alarm bells ringing.

However, since it appears that those highly-placed at County Hall have more bats in their collective belfry than are seen in the opening credits of Scooby Doo, perhaps all the flapping about is drowning out the warnings.

But that is as nothing with the real problem with the Council’s treatment of the Towy Community Church.

The real problem is that the Church is being treated as a special case on a matter of enforcement. It has received preferential treatment from the Council in relation to breaches of the planning permission granted to it for the use of the building it occupies. Readers, this is not right.

There is no planet where the needs of a small extremist sect should entitle it to expect that the Executive Board of this council will let it get away with breaking the rules. And in order to facilitate breaking the rules the Executive Board went on a jolly outing to God’s own bowling alley so they could see for themselves the multiple breaches of a legally binding agreement between the Council and the Church. Isn't there something somewhere about rendering unto Caesar…?

One can but guess as to why the Executive Board is so supine in its dealings with Towy Community Church. Perhaps they are answering to a higher voice; to their own immanent divinity. If they are, Cadno has some minatory words that may be of use to them. They are also from the Gospel of Matthew. At 7:15, we are all enjoined to: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

Of course, readers, bearing in mind the largesse being strewn around the Towy Community Church, the profits are very real."

The Carmarthenshire Herald's letters page carries a welcoming message from a Carmarthenshire resident describing its arrival as a breath of fresh air. The writer goes on to say;

"...Keep up the good work to fearlessly report the machinations going on inside County Hall in Carmarthen - something that those without access to certain 'blogs' have been denied for years!However, I hope that 'Cadno' manages to avoid the 'hounds' and the 'huntsmen' from the Kremlin - sorry, County Hall in Carmarthen. They can be ruthless and firm believers in censorship"

Yes indeed, good luck to Cadno, and the Herald, as only last week I received a legal threat from chief executive, Mr Mark James in relation to this blog.

Tuesday, 10 March 2015

As predicted (and covered in detail) over on Cneifwr's blog, the Executive Board were quite happy yesterday to plunder those supposedly precious reserves to fund the £5m link road for the Carms West housing development on behalf of private developers.

As the Carmarthenshire Herald also pointed out on Friday this is in "stark contrast to the stance it has taken on using reserves to cushion the blow of savage cuts to council services...the council appears to be helping out private business interests while slashing services for the elderly and families". See also 'Reasonable and necessary priorities'

After having planned this whole development, totalling 1200 homes, for at least six years that I know of, it is quite incredible that there was no firm plan as to how this road, essential to the development, would be paid for.

Things reached a head a few weeks ago when the application for 250 homes on part of the site was deferred when the Welsh Government intervened, with concerns over the road. This application had been made by a small consortium of private investors called Carmarthen Promotions Ltd based in East Anglia which appeared to have started trading just last September.

In order to get the application approved there was clearly some hard negotiating between the parties. The council, ever keen to please, hurriedly promised to cough up the lot in the vague hope that they might get it back from the developers and a wing and a prayer that the WG might have a whip round. As it happens, the WG have insisted that no more than 60 homes can be built before the road is completed.

Today's decision to fund the road scheme was held as an exempt item, even though most of the information was already in the public domain.

The press and public were excluded but following the WLGA recommendation, and in what must have been torture for the Exec Board and officials, non-Exec Board councillors were allowed to stay and observe. Unheard of in Carmarthenshire, this practice is in fact commonplace across western democracies

I'm not certain whether they had to sign the official secrets act but the non-exec councillors were warned about breathing a word on pain of death, or excommunication.

Praise be!

Also on the agenda was the item concerning the Towy Community Church and the evangelical bowling alley, (See 'Bending over backwards' and previous posts). As also predicted, the good folk were not whisked off to court for breaching legal agreements or planning permissions but treated to a special visit from the Board no less.

I am not certain what took place on the visit, hopefully not a visit to the evangelical bar, but the option of the church vacating the areas of the building they had moved into which breached the agreement was not even discussed. Re-jigging the legal Agreement was the only option on offer.

What has been strange about this whole development has been the utter devotion, financially and spiritually, County Hall has shown to a small organisation, which also happens to be a limited company. Anyone is free to set up a community enterprise but you are highly unlikely to receive the level of support from your local authority as this one seems to have done but as I have said before on this blog, the lord moves in mysterious ways, not least of all in the corridors of County Hall...

The Executive Board members had clearly seen the light (again) and there was some seriously fundamentalist hot-air. Cllr Jane Tremlett was so excited she even suggested they should go bowling on a team building exercise. Not content with that, she also suggested they 'facilitate' grant funding of £20,000 for a new boiler in the area which they're not even supposed to occupy yet. Praise be! And only the week before, she'd voted in favour of cutting £18k of funding from the Myrddin Special Unit...

The last word has to go to dear Cllr Pam Palmer who described it as a 'Christian enterprise' taking things forward with a 'wonderful bowling alley'. She went further and mentioned 'bad press and bloggers who had been unfair...libellous in my opinion'. Really Pam? Do you have some evidence of that?

What can we expect next? County Hall bankrolling a civil lawsuit on behalf of the Towy Church? Nothing would surprise me..

Update 12 March;
The minutes of the Exec Board meeting have now been published and do not, of course, record for posterity Jane and Pam's immortal words above.

However it does appear that Mr James was full of his characteristic, er, spiritual benevolence and "...it was suggested that any other members who wished to see the facilities be invited to contact the Chief Executive’s office which could then facilitate a visit."
More boilers on the way.End of the road

Finally, and not on yesterday's agenda, it appears that the entirely non-religious, non-privately run Adult Community Learning centres will be closing. These are located in Llandeilo, Glanaman, Carmarthen and Felinfoel. In a report to Scrutiny tomorrow (11th March), the original plan to get the college of further education to run the courses appears to have run out of steam. The council emphasises that they don't have to provide this service, they only have to make sure someone else does.

The council is very keen to blame cuts inflicted by the Welsh Government and makes much of the fact that the service is predicted to be over-budget by a whole £34,000 this year. It appears that the council have been keen to rid themselves of these community centres for sometime and the Welsh Government has provided a useful excuse.

Friday, 6 March 2015

The first half of today's full council meeting was essentially to ratify the budget approved last week.
As I and others commented at the time, it was the intervention of the chief executive which was particularly inappropriate. Today's Carmarthenshire Herald seems to have reached the same view;

'Watching the meeting on playback a key role in the budget debate was played by controversial chief executive Mark James. Intervening in political repartee, and siding with the administration after stating that the Council's head of finance could not comment on the oppositions proposals, Mr James proceeded to comment on them and roundly reject them.Mr James, whose 'peculiar' pension arrangements were the subject of a humiliating climb down by the council last year, and who lately had his request for a £400k+ severance package booted into the long grass, appeared intent on ensuring that the budget proposals before the council were accepted as written without amendment nor redaction.The Labour/Independent grouping made sure that Mr James' bidding was followed."

As today's gathering was largely a technical rubber stamp for last week's decision the chief executive didn't need to join in. Safe in the knowledge that the decision could not be rescinded. The matter of cutting £18,000 from Myrddin Special School funding was mentioned several times but the Labour and Independent speakers chose to ignore it.

The argument over the use of reserves continued, which can all be seen on the archived webcast.
Plaid councillor, Elwyn Williams, proposed that £1.2m (1%) be taken from the earmarked reserves to cap the council tax at 3% instead of 4.8%. Plaid's original proposal to use £4.2m of reserves was defeated the previous week.

Mr James and legal Linda quickly intervened to claim that the constitution forbade such a vote being taken as it would affect last week's decision. The only way the proposal could continue to a vote was if the Standing Orders were suspended.

The vote to suspend Standing Orders was defeated by the Labour and Independents. So that was the end of that. Once again, Mr James' bidding was obediently followed. The proposal to cap your council tax didn't even get to the vote. 4.8% it is then.

As a reminder, the council currently has £122m in reserves stuffed under the County Hall mattress.

One final point with regards to the use of council reserves, or rather the refusal to use them. Earlier in the meeting there had been unanimous horror at the decision by the National Police Air Service to stop using Pembrey as a base for the police helicopter and all were agreed that they's send a stern letter to the Home Office.
Kevin Madge then went on to criticise the Police Commissioner for sitting on police reserves of £43m, some of which could have been to fund necessary frontline policing....oh dear.

The meeting then moved on to the Local Government Reform consultation, a topic which I covered briefly here. What was very strange was that the item had to be introduced by the chief executive (not the Chair of course..) as a 'debate'. Holding a debate, apparently, was not something they'd ever done before. As it was such a new concept he even asked for feedback on how they all thought it went.
Not sure what anyone thought was supposed to happen in the Chamber for all these years.

Kevin Madge proceeded to ramble on at length giving the Labour groups' view on the entire paper until somebody stopped him.

Anyway it doesn't seem that our councillors are very impressed with Minister Leighton Andrew's attempts to end the culture of 'old boys' clubs', not even from the old girls. There was much disgust over the 'five term' time limits for councillors and equal dismay at the possible reduction of allowances. Kevin Madge argued that the basic allowance was too low, although didn't comment on proposals to reduce senior councillors's pay, his being £49,000 per year.

Cllr Palmer also thought the idea of having an independent panel for the senior management selection process was an 'abomination', no less. Only councillors, such as her good self, and dear Meryl naturally, could know what was good for the people of Carmarthenshire...

There was a general consensus that the report was short on detail and not well thought through. Several interesting arguments were made (all available to view on the archive), but time ran out. The 'debate' will continue at the April meeting... so a subject to which we'll return in more detail.

Oh, and before I go, the annual Pay Policy Statement was also up for the rubber stamp. Not that I'm cynical about these things being PR exercises or anything but by happy coincidence, benevolently removing the lowest points on the staff pay scale, the ratio of Chief Exec pay to lowest earner has, er, 'plummeted' from 12.4:1 to 11.95:1.
Although of course these calculations wouldn't take into account any extra pay or benefits that the chief executive might happen to receive such as unlawful pension supplements, returning officer fees or unlawful legal costs.

Today's first edition of the Carmarthenshire Herald leads with the allegations of historic child abuse at Rhydygors Special School and Cartref-y-Gelli Children's home, as reported in the media this week.

In what can only be described as a refreshing change, The Carmarthenshire Herald (the Llanelli Herald was also launched today) has given the story the prominence, and in particular the headline, it deserves.
A very promising start.

Update 14.23
After having now bought a copy there is little more to add to the headline story.

The Herald was contacted by a former pupil of Rhydygors who said that not only was such abuse rife 30 years ago but it was a well known fact that it was happening.
Sadly this is a story we hear all too often these days.

The Herald asked the council what contact it has had with the police over both the 2000 and this latest investigation and whether it had ever had similar allegations or complaints made to it, outside of these police investigations.

No allegations have been made with regards to Carmarthenshire Council's handling of its role in the investigations but given the example of Clwyd County Council's refusal to publish a 1996 report into north Wales child abuse, apparently on the advice of their insurers, prompted the Herald to ask Carmarthenshire whether its own insurers had provided any advice with regards to both the 2000 and the ongoing investigations.

So far the council have only confirmed that they are working closely with the police to investigate the matter and "As this is a legal matter, it is not possible to give any further information at the moment".

The council also declined to comment on the 1998 Social Service Inspectorate report concerning Cartref-y-Gelli Children's home. (Again please see earlier post for links)

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Last week, amongst the budget proposals, the council approved over £200,000 in cuts to services for children with special educational needs or disabilities.
The budget was pushed through by officers and approved by the Labour and the Independents at last week's meeting.

The reality is illustrated by an article in this week's Carmarthen Journal concerning the Myrddin Children's Special and Autistic Unit in Carmarthen. The unit will see it's council funding of £39,000 cut by £18,000, nearly half of it.

Last October, Leader of the council Kevin Madge said that the payment of nearly £27,000 to Tim Kerr QC to defend (unsuccessfully) the unlawful payments received by the chief executive, Mark James, were "reasonable and necessary".

I guess it all depends on your priorities as to what constitutes 'reasonable and necessary'....

Next Monday's Executive Board meeting has a couple of interesting items. The first concerns County Hall's evangelical friends at the Towy Community Church, or the Xcel bowling alley as it's more comfortably known.

The Item concerns a breach of the legal agreement by the church for using parts of the building designated for phase 2 of the project. Phase 2 consists of the creation of a 600 seater 'auditorium' (a church) and various 'therapy' rooms and offices. The church has breached the agreement by using some of the space to house it's furniture recycling facility before presenting detailed plans of the phase 2 works.

Allowing this current breach to continue might appear reasonable but this agreement was put in place to prevent 'piecemeal development or occupation' and to ensure the church were able to deliver phase 2 of the agreed scheme. If they were not able to honour the agreement, the council would then have had the the option to secure possession of the remaining part of the property for an alternative use. How phase 2 will be funded remains to be seen...Cneifiwr's most recent post on the subject is well worth a read.

The council, so far, has been extraordinarily generous towards it's evangelical partners giving them over £1.4m in land deals, loans and grants. Requests for correspondence between County Hall and the church were flatly refused, in fact it's turned out to be something of a sensitive subject. All this, including the controversy over the proposed Mercy Ministry, has been covered on this and Cneifiwr's blog.

The church are now seeking to alter the agreement to 'legalise' the breach.

What strikes me as odd is that the church would have been very well aware that parts of the building were legally off limits and I can only assume that they would have also been well aware that County Hall would happily iron out any legal creases.

We can also safely assume the new agreement will be rubber-stamped on Monday. The added threat that the council's lease could become void will help. When mere mortals have been found to be in breach of some council agreement or other, including building regulations or planning permission, they are swiftly hauled over the coals. Perhaps if you let them know you're a believer in the literal truth of the bible, it might help...

Bending over backwards for a small fundamentalist Christian organisation may be entirely reasonable but we can only speculate as to why County Hall refused to fly the Rainbow flag...

The second item concerns the Carmarthen West development - this clearly relates to the £5m link road and will be held behind closed doors. Cneifwr has covered this and also explains how the council are funding the landed gentry of England.

Before I go, there is yet another full council meeting on Friday to rubber stamp the budget by formally setting the council tax. The meeting is only listed for two hours and includes a notice of motion to retain the police helicopter base at Pembrey. This is a worthy cause but one which I am sure everyone will be in agreement on and I daresay will want to speak on.

All this leaves little time for the item on the recent White Paper regarding local government reform. As I said at the beginning of February, this is an important consultation and if the council are going to provide a corporate response, it must have as full input from all councillors, it's not something that should be left to Legal Linda to fill in in her tea break.

BBC Wales have obtained a Social Services Inspectorate report dated 1998 regarding the Cartref-Y-Gelli Children's Home. The home closed in 1998 but Carmarthenshire Council will not say why.

"The report published in 1998, obtained by BBC Wales, makes 14 recommendations for Carmarthen's Cartref-y-Gelli.It says not all children were confident "of being listened to and some expressed a feeling that it was not worth complaining".Carmarthenshire council has been asked to comment."

Grim news (BBC Wales) emerged this week that six people have been arrested in relation to allegations of sexual and physical abuse of children at Rhydygors special school and Cartref-y-Gelli childrens' home in Carmarthen. The allegations date from 1976 to 1990.

Rhydygors is a pupil referral unit for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, Cartref-y-Gelli closed some time ago. The allegations relate to abuse of over twenty victims and all involve members of staff, none of those staff still work at the school.

Allegations relating to Rhydygors were first investigated in 2000 and referred to the CPS but criminal proceedings were not instigated. Those allegations and the investigation were not reported to the media at the time.

Additional allegations, including those at Cartref-y-Gelli, were made in 2012 and the subsequent criminal investigation, called Operation Almond looked again at the earlier allegations afresh. The investigation, which is ongoing, has now resulted in today's arrests.

Carmarthenshire County Council has said it is working closely with Dyfed-Powys Police to fully investigate the allegations.

Friday, 27 February 2015

In case it still isn't very apparent, the council, via the working group are aiming, they say, to be the 'most open council in Wales' and considering the 39 recommendations of the WLGA Governance review. True to form, the meetings of the working group are held behind closed doors and the minutes, or 'Action Notes', are not published. They are available on request several weeks later.

You would expect a group of this nature to be made up exclusively of backbench and opposition councillors, and not include three members of the ruling executive board.

It is also clear that the chief executive is exerting plenty of influence either in person, or via the medium of acting head of legal, Linda Rees Jones.

The review, you may remember, recommended a 'change of culture', it was number one recommendation in fact. So far, there's little evidence of that.

As regular readers will know, the issue over members of the public filming meetings has been a bone of contention for some considerable time, so I'll start with that.

You might have thought, following the legislation passed in England and even Pembrokeshire's decision to throw open the doors, that the WLGA recommendation for the council to "Consider allowing the public filming of council meetings" would be happily accepted.
Sadly not. What we've got is pointless and ridiculous.

The mealy-mouthed Notes for the 8th January meeting state;

"In accordance with the Group’s decision at its last meeting consideration was given to whether to allow the public to film meetings. The Head of Administration and Law advised that the Welsh Government had urged Local Authorities in Wales to look favourably at permitting filming of meetings provided it was not a distraction though it was noted that the former did not allow filming of its own meetings.

The Group heard arguments for and against allowing members of the public to film at all meetings they were entitled to attend and it was subsequently;

"AGREED that initially, for a trial period of 12 months, filming be allowed at meetings webcasted by the Council itself.

....and moving forward to the 26th January meeting;

"Reference was made to minute no. 5 [filming meetings] and it was pointed out that not all members of the Group were in agreement with the decision made. The Head of Administration & Law clarified that where decisions are not unanimous then they are carried by a majority vote.

"AGREED that.... minute number 5 being amended to state AGREED BY A MAJORITY

So the public can only film and record those meeting which are currently being webcast, ie under council control. It's highly unlikely that anyone is going to want to do that.

Currently only full council and planning meetings are webcast. Executive Board, all five Scrutiny Committees, Democratic Services, Audit Committee, Standards Committee and Licensing Committees are not.

Just in case the sky falls in, they've also limited this pointless exercise to a twelve month pilot.

Not only that, some Members even voted against this resolution, and wanted that fact noted. Quite incredible.

The point of allowing the public to make their own recordings is, as I've said many times, a matter of democratic principle and transparency and one important enough to have now been given legal protection in England. The point has been missed, yet again.

Moving on, the removal of any discussion of committee reports from the full council agendas was something the chief executive was very keen on. As we know, it has already been brought in.

It was discussed at the meeting on the 8th January. Mr James was not present at that meeting but of course, Linda Rees Jones was and she did her best to push the point on his behalf.
The committee agreed, but no decision was made as when this would happen.

Mr James was present at the meeting of the 26th January, and unique to this recommendation, the group were invited to implement this change 'with immediate effect'.

Unlike the sidelining of committee reports above, Councillors who wish to ask a supplementary questions at full council still have to go through the rigmarole of suspending standing orders.

According to the Notes this was supposed to be changed at January's, and then February's council meeting, along, incidentally, with a 'review' concerning the collection of details (on the false pretences of "fire safety reasons", remember all that nonsense?) of anyone who attends the public gallery...
Oh well, perhaps March then...

Many of the recommendations are being sent off to the Executive Board, who are being politely asked to consider, for example, whether to webcast their meetings (shouldn't be a problem as the decisions are actually made in pre and post meeting 'briefings'), or whether to allow backbench councillors to ask questions at their meetings.

Some of recommendations have become completely skewed. For instance;

WLGA Recommendation 31 has gone from;

"The Council should ensure that all members receive information relating to exempt items and that non-executive members should remain for exempt items, as is practice at most other councils."

To;

"Agreed to recommend to the Executive Board that the Chair and Vice Chair of the opposition and Chairs of Scrutiny Committees receive copies of exempt reports"

The point of allowing all members to have information on, and be able to observe exempt items is so they can be fully informed and ask questions or call-in decisions. Clearly the mistrust that backbench councillors are not to be trusted with such information is still prevalent.

The requirement for seven seconders to support any Motion was brought in by the chief executive a couple of years ago as some were critical of the council. The recommendation is that this should relaxed back to normal levels, ie a proposer and one seconder within three months.

Despite this appearing to be a simple matter it seems to require Ms Linda Rees Jones trawling around all 22 local authorities to ask them what they do. Seems she's still trawling.

Whatever your views on the budget decision on Tuesday, the control, and level of intervention, by the unelected chief executive showed quite clearly that the democratic governance of this council remains in disarray and not fit for purpose, and no amount of tinkering around the edges, or with the constitution, is going to cure the toxic culture.

I will report on further developments, including the urgently needed and ongoing (two years now surely?) review of the Press and Media Protocol, over the coming weeks...or months.

Thursday, 26 February 2015

A few hours after Mark James's budget was approved on Tuesday, Labour Minister Leighton Andrews issued a statement, again referring to Council reserves as he had already done last year.
Carmarthenshire, it turns out, has a total of £122m in reserves, twice as much as Cardiff.
Mr Andrews said;

"Whilst it is prudent for Authorities to prepare for more challenging financial times, it is also reasonable to want to see evidence that Authorities are making financial decisions in the best interests of their communities."

If you haven't realised it by now, those that are running this council are not acting in the best interests of their communities. Mr James personally intervened to reject outright the opposition proposals to use a tiny proportion of the earmarked reserves and the Labour/Independents followed like sheep. He acted unprofessionally and with arrogance.

Quite why the Plaid opposition didn't shout out their objections there and then and stop him in his tracks, I don't know.

Don't forget, whilst Kevin Madge, Meryl and Co are cutting your services and raising your council tax they were complicit in approving a tax avoidance scheme for Mr James and shelling out thousands to defend him. Along with the unlawful libel costs, the whole affair was nothing short of criminal.

And the only reason the Labour group refused to rubber stamp his golden handshake was because there's an election on May 7th.
You will note that £3m has already been transferred into the Severance Scheme (from those 'precious' reserves, 'earmarked' for something else), ready and waiting for the eventual pay-off.

The WLGA governance review identified a toxic culture within County Hall and a need for urgent change. Clearly those poisonous relationships remain alive and well.

If councillors were acting in the best interests of their communities, they would have sacked Mr James last year when they had the chance.

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

The sound wasn't working for the first twenty minutes of today's council webcast but when it did kick in, the Chamber was in mid-tribute to Mr Dave Gilbert, Director of Regeneration and deputy chief executive who was 'semi-retiring'. Quite where he was going was lost due to the absence of sound (it may return on the archive) but he did seem to be leaving the Titanic after 12 years on board.

Amongst the applause, Mr James thanked him for 'holding the reins' for those three months last year and apparently Meryl had written a poem. Sadly she didn't read it out....

Amid the back-slapping the meeting moved on to drive through the budget, cutting services to residents and putting up their council tax by 4.8%.

The Exec Board Member for money, Cllr Jeff Edmunds wanted to present the whole budget, including the capital budget and rent increases all in one summary.
Opposition councillors protested to this, so the chief executive suggested a show of hands, he swiftly concluded that the protesters had been defeated.
Daff (the Chair) looked a bit puzzled and actually appeared to disagree with Mr James over the vote...Mr James took no notice and Cllr Edmunds continued anyway.

To be brief, it was a three year budget plan to make cuts of £45m, £30m of which was to be made in the next two years. As I have mentioned, there were several red herrings which had already been dropped by the Executive Board.

As the opposition rightly pointed out, although welcome, this has become an annual event, drip fed to the press since Christmas purely to benefit the reputation of the Executive Board. As the Administration, they could have made sure these cuts, eg meals on wheels, youth services, never appeared in the proposals in the first place.

The plan put forward meant a well-over-the-rate of inflation council tax rise of 4.8% and council house rent rise of 4.3%. Which made the small rise for the lowest paid staff which was on offer, a bit pointless. No one suggested a pay cut for the very highest paid staff..

The Plaid opposition put forward an amendment to the budget to use just 8% of the earmarked reserves which would have cancelled out the £4m in service cuts for this year as well as reducing the council tax rise by 1%.

Despite their own Labour Minister Leighton Andrews suggesting the exploration of reserves as a realistic option for Welsh Councils late last year, Labour claimed that Plaid's proposal was far too late in the proceedings, having only materialised the previous day.

This was not strictly true as Plaid have made this suggestion every year during consultation and I am certain that this year was no exception.

However, this year Plaid, well Cllr Dai Jenkins, had done the maths and based this suggestion on a little research on how these 'earmarked reserves' are managed.

The council holds roughly £73m in 'earmarked' reserves for various purposes. There's a further £26m in 'general reserves'. The amount held in the reserves has doubled since 2009. Cllr Jenkins observed that when money has been taken from reserves it's not always related to the purpose for which it was intended.

Most notably earlier this month, the Exec Board approved a £3m transfer from the Job Evaluation Fund to the Corporate Retirement Fund to pay for the continuing severance scheme. As the Cllr pointed out, this was decided by the Board in about 3 seconds, a million quid a second.

He mentioned another transfer when £3m was taken from the Fleet Management reserve to finance extra care in the social services department.

He also made an interesting observation over the wages bill, whilst the bill for technical services (bins, roads etc) had dropped by 9.6% the wage bill for the council press office had risen by 12.8%.

Cllr Jenkins listed several reserve funds which could possibly be reduced without detriment to future risk. This money belonged to the people of Carmarthenshire and should the county disappear in the wake of the Williams Commission where would it go? No one knew.

After some political to-ing and fro-ing, the Plaid proposals appeared to be gaining legs so Kevin Madge, after waffling that there was too much debate, quickly sought officer back-up.

The chief exec waded further into the debate claiming that that the finance officer couldn't comment on proposals from a political group, but Mr James himself then proceeded to rattle off his own rejection of the proposals.
You may remember last year he went one step further and used the pages of the Carmarthen Journal to reject political proposals from the opposition.

Both Mr James and the interim Director of Finance resorted to scare tactics to quell the resistance; it wouldn't be 'legal', the books wouldn't balance....the budget was clearly set in stone, there was to be no deviation or delay.

Taking over as Chair, Mr James called for the votes. The full debate can be seen on the archive but the upshot was that the Plaid amendment was defeated by the Labour/Independent Groups (Cllr Dole called for a recorded vote for future reference) and then the main budget went through, again supported by the Labour and the 'Independents'.
The decision will be rubber-stamped at a further full council meeting on March 6th.

Next up, two and a half hours into the meeting and just before lunch, was the Ombudsman's report. As predicted, the deliberate inclusion of this report within the budget meeting meant that debate and discussion would be minimal, completely overshadowed by the previous item.

In the event Exec Board Member Cllr Keith Davies, the Director Robert Sully and the head of service Jake Morgan all spoke to express their disappointment in the report and how the issues identified by the ombudsman had now been addressed. Cllr Lenny raised the issue of the 'culture of defensiveness' and was told, somewhat defensively, that this was the approach taken by the staff originally involved.
Everyone had learned from their errors and all was now fine, apparently.
It doesn't look like this report will go to the scrutiny committee. All done and dusted. Nothing to see here..move along.

That was more or less that, and with the Mark James' New Look Agenda removing any possibility of discussion over the batch of Scrutiny, Planning and Democratic Services meetings 'for information only', it was over.

Later in the day, Plaid Cllr Alun Lenny released this statement;

A DAY OF CUTS AT COUNTY HALL The Labour-independent controlled council voted for a budget of cuts, increased charges for services such as school meals and car parking, inflation-busting 4.3% hike in rents for council tenants and a 4.85% raise in council tax. All the cuts and charges could have been avoided this year had they accepted a Plaid Cymru opposition group proposal to take £6.2m (under 10%) from the Earmarked Reserves of £73.5m. These reserves (which are in addition to the General Reserve) have doubled since 2009. The people of Carmarthenshire have been badly let down and have every reason to be angry. This Labour-led council has meekly followed the Tory agenda of slashing public services. Plaid Cymru says that austerity has clearly failed. Our people have suffered cuts and extra charges to no avail. What was truly depressing was seeing the council’s Chief Executive and Head of Resources intervening in the debate. This council is obviously officer-led, as the Executive Board is too weak to run the council.
Archived webcast here, the sounds starts working around 18 minutes in.

Monday, 23 February 2015

I received confirmation today that a Carmarthenshire version of the Pembrokeshire Herald will be launched next month. On Friday 6th March to be precise and the new 'Carmarthenshire Herald' will be available throughout the county.

Anyone who has followed the goings-on over the county border will be aware that the Pembs Herald has been impressive, and has certainly not held back, in it's reporting of council matters.

This is welcome news for Carmarthenshire, where the Herald will find plenty to fill its pages from our very own dysfunctional council.

I'm sure County Hall will be delighted...

Update 24th February;

The launch of the paper (which will also have a Llanelli edition) has been covered by the journalism website Hold The Front Page.
The Editor of the Herald, Thomas Sinclair said

“Launching two brand new independent newspaper titles could be seen as a brave venture in this uncertain economic climate, but we at the Herald see a growing need for a county-wide voice for the people of Carmarthenshire.“We will be launching these papers along the same principles which have made The Pembrokeshire Herald successful further west.“We’re going to be an independent voice. Just like in Pembrokeshire, we’re not going to be relying on revenue from local authorities or any government sources.“It’s again a return to good old fashioned journalism.”
Another article has appeared this evening on Press Gazette.

25th February; for Cneifiwr's take on this latest threat to the Mark James Media Empire click here

2nd March; Carmarthenshire Herald Facebook page is here and @carmsherald can also be found on Twitter.

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'The Claimant is a housewife, mother and amateur blogger. The defendants are a council and a chief executive. It is literally state versus citizen. In a large part, the origins of the entire case derive from the issue of getting ones voice heard at all'

'In light of the evidence, the allegations of perverting the course of justice are unsustainable. This is the most serious allegation and the Claimant deserves to have her reputation vindicated...Mr Davies' evidence was incoherent, confused and contradicted [his] statements given at the time...in short, Mr Davies' evidence of what happened has completely changed and he cannot be relied on'